EDITORIAL - An adjunct fellow of the Manhattan Institute has compiled some of the most comprehensive research on how immigrants and illegal immigrants are really affecting America. Here are some of the lowlights.

American taxpayers are coughing up more than $9,000 a year in cash or benefits to each immigrant this country. One third (and I think this number is low) of those immigrants are illegal. So there are 37 million criminal immigrants in the United States. This means that the national cost of immigrants and illegal immigrants in this country last year was more than $346 billion – twice the fiscal deficit. The author of the research, Edwin S. Rubenstein, says this is because "Immigrants are poorer, pay less tax and are more likely to receive public benefits than natives." Wow. I'll alert the media.

When it comes to the financial burden on our government schools, 3.8 million immigrants – I'm guessing the majority are illegal -- are enrolled in the most expensive government classes – non-English speaking. They are the most expensive because they require schools to hire specialized teachers, to train those teachers, and absorb the administrative costs. It is estimated that $1,030 is spent on each immigrant or illegal in government schools ... that's about $3.9 billion.

Want more on that government education you are so in love with? Of the 48.4 million government school children in this country, 19% are immigrants or children of immigrants. But get this, in the next few years, immigration will account for virtually all increases in government school spending.

So how about all of those criminal aliens sitting in US jails? It costs US taxpayers $1.5 billion to incarcerate 267,000 criminal aliens in federal prison for a year. Even worse, since prisons are overcrowded, 80,000 to 100,000 criminal aliens have been prematurely released back onto the streets. These criminals impose heavy costs on their victims. The research estimates that the loss of income and property, hospital bills and emotion suffering at the hands of immigrants and illegal totals $1.6 million per victim.

Many people will try and tell you that immigrant households don't receive government benefits ... not so. Almost 25% of immigrant households receive Medicaid. Compare that number to the number of native-born Americans that receive Medicaid – 14.8%. Hispanics account for 19.2% of Medicaid enrollment, even though they are only 13.7% of the population.

And here's something that few people will talk about – immigrant workers actually depress the wages received by native-born Americans. This causes a $100 billion shortfall in federal tax revenue. If the labor force from immigration increases by 10%, this reduces the wages of native-born Americans by over 5%.

Lovely, don't you think? Yet we can't get the politicians in Washington to do anything really meaningful about the invasion.